Sunday was our last day with judiang. So sad! We went back to the cafe we first ate at this trip (it’s called Howies) and had breakfast. I got a breakfast bagel (egg, cheese & bacon) and hashbrowns, plus apple juice. Good eats. Took some pictures (which I still need to download from the camera) of the girls, too. Then we loaded up the car with Judi’s shit & with Lance and headed back to Judi’s old place. Just as we were to turn onto Roosevelt, we discovered our turn was blocked. We turned the other way and realized that there was a foot race going on. elsaf turned onto Lakeshore Drive and we saw a sign advertising the Shamrock Shuffle. Um, it’s April folks, not March!

So Elsa drove up Lakeshore Drive and we kept looking for a place to turn to get towards State Street. But there was more race. And more. And we passed downtown and got to the hoity toity part of town. But eventually Elsa could turn left and we headed for State Street. We drove south on State, only to discover that it, too, devolved into this “Shuffle.” And so we had to go further out of our way. And just when we found a road going south that wasn’t involved in the race, it was blocked due to a farmer’s market!

By sheer luck and intuition, we finally found our way to Judi’s old place. Judi & I dropped her stuff (and Lance) off at the apartment and I did a search on the web for the Shamrock Shuffle. Judi found us a way back to the new apartment that didn’t require a half an hour (it’s usually a 3-5 minute drive!) and we returned to stuff OUR stuff into Elsa’s car. Lots of hugs transpired, then Elsa and I headed south towards Chinatown and then towards I-94. Then it was East all the way, baby!

We stopped at Big Boy for lunch (not Elias’ Big Boy or Frische’s Big Boy, just Big Boy) and I discovered that, whereas all Big Macs are made the same, not all Big Boys are made the same. Still, the food was hot & tasty & filled us up. I drove for the next leg of the trip, and several miles down the road I realized I’d left my journal back at the restaurant! Shit! I had a couple of trips in it, plus notes on my upcoming Italy trip, plus Judi’s paint swatch numbers, and some other odds & ends in it. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Still, it wasn’t worth going back for, so I just kept on driving. (Perhaps, had we not had the morning delay already, I might have been tempted to go back. But it’s well that I didn’t, as we were later to discover.)

After an hour’s worth of driving and a bit, Elsa took over again to get us through Detroit. But as we neared our final destination (well, her final destination, my next to final destination) there was a detour! Bugger! And what’s worse, once you got on the detour, they suddenly decided we didn’t need detour signs to keep us going in the right direction. Somehow, Elsa managed to get us back to her place, but it was at least 20 minutes longer (maybe more like 30 minutes) than it should have been.

I gathered all of my stuff up and stuffed it into my car. Said “Hi” to Elsa’s doggies. Hugged Elsa. Then started the 3 1/2 hour drive home. I had figured originally that I’d get home around 8:30pm. With our two major detours that day, however, it was quarter to 10 when I arrived. Leo was thrilled to see me. 🙂 No new Doctor Who for us that night, but I figured I could show it to him the following night. Then it was bedtime and my vacation was officially over. So sad!

Thanks to Judi for hosting us and to Elsa for taking me there and for both of them & Emily for the good friend times. I had a blast! I love you guys! 🙂

As I was waking up on Saturday morning, it suddenly struck me: I hadn’t finished my online course! And Saturday was the last day! SH*T! So as soon as I woke up, I had my laptop on and was at the SchoolNet website trying to find my online class. Once I found it, I worked for an hour and a half solid trying to complete the week’s assignments. Since judiang wasn’t up yet and elsaf was occupying herself with her online shenanigans, it worked out just fine. I wrote a short research summary on Johannes Kepler and “unpacked” two Physical Science indicators and participated in the class discussion board, and then was done. Phew! (My original intent was to finish the class before I went to Chicago, but I goofed off Sunday & Monday and had no time on Tuesday. Well, not quite like that, but good enough!)

We had yet another Entenmann’s danish (different flavors each morning) to start our morning off right. And our main task of the day was to find a Japanese sushi place for lunch. I still intended to buy the girls some sushi (thus getting some for me, too). After much scouring of the WWW (including using the wonderful local.google.com – if you haven’t tried it yet, you should!) we narrowed down the places to one: Penang, a Malaysian restaurant & sushi bar. It was in Chinatown and we figured that was easy enough to get to. Judi talked about free parking and all that jazz, but when we got there, we found out things had changed a bit since Judi last needed to worry about parking. Still $5 wasn’t too much of a hardship.

Penang turned out to be across the street from the parking lot and catty corner from our usual dim sum place. And it turned out to have mighty fine sushi! We all ordered miso soup as a starter and then got our favorite sushis to munch on. I went with the maki combo – tuna maki, yellow tail maki, and my personal favorite, California roll. Turns out I hit the jackpot as they brought out this HUGE plate o’ sushi. So much so that I had to give some of my tuna & yellow tail maki away. I et all the California roll myself, of course. 🙂 (Besides, I have to protect Judi from POISON, AKA avocado.)

We left the place quite full and walked down the streets of Chinatown, stopping in a bakery to get some sesame buns w/ red bean paste and a couple other lovelies (mini mooncakes with lotus and some with red bean paste). We shopped in a few stores too, enjoying the neat-o objects d’art (and the tacky stuff too). But we didn’t stay too long – back to the new apartment to rest up and goof off.

Hmmm, I feel like I’m missing something between returning from Chinatown and eventually going to Lalo’s for supper. Elsa? Judi? Can either of you remind me what we did? Or was that it? Anyhoo, we’d agreed to meet with miz_em and her hubby for supper at Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant. Once again, Elsa did a fine job of driving us through the crazy traffic known as Chicago and got us to a parking garage near the restaurant. While we waited on Mr & Miz Em (heh), I ordered an amaretto sour & Judi got a margarita. Once we were all together, we ordered all kinds of wonderful food. I went with flautas, one of my favorite Mexican (American) dishes. Flute shaped tubes of fried yellow corn tortillas with meat & cheese (beef for me, thanks) in them. Guacamole (POISON for Judi), rice & beans as well. Very tasty. Chicago prices. Ah well! 😉

We had a wonderful evening talking with Em & hubby, but it eventually had to end. We wished her a Happy Birthday (giving many gift suggestions to him) and waddled back to the parking garage. As we were returning to the garage, we saw huge signs saying “SOFA” on them and I thought “Ah, wrong part of the garage. We’re parked in FABRIC.” Yes, I had the ticket to confirm that we were parked on the second level, called FABRIC for some reason. But as we moved closer, I saw the sign next to “SOFA” saying “MOUNTAIN.” Ah! It’s not part of the parking garage! It’s a sofa store! LOL – I admitted this to the gurls, and we all laughed.

Back home, we put on “The End of the World” which was the second Doctor Who episode of this new season. (Elsa had started the download of it almost as soon as it popped up online – ah! That’s what we did during the between meal time!) Once again, having a HUGE SCREEN to watch the new episode on was fabulous. And I really liked the second story. Yay for New Who being fabby! I knew it would! After Doctor Who, we got out the cheesecake and started watching Kill Bill Vol 1 (a DVD that Judi bought all by herself!) It’s still such an odd movie, but it did make me want to finally go see Volume 2. Maybe this weekend I’ll rent it?

We crawled to bed after the movie and slept soundly, because Sunday was to be TRAVEL DAY, where we met with many pitfalls to Trina getting home at a decent hour. Bleh! But more about that later.

PS: Damn fine weather we had yesterday & today! Let’s hear it for SPRING!

So, last Friday was judiang‘s birthday, and to help celebrate, elsaf, the master chef, made a 6 course meal for us. Ooh la la! So, what did I think of it?

For starter we had grilled shrimp with homemade pesto & garlic butter dipping sauces. Garlic butter is always a plus, but man, that pesto was out of this world. I love good pesto, and this had the right balance (of basic leaves? heh, private joke) of flavors. It was also great on the bread that we picked up at Jewel.

Next came the gingered butternut squash soup. I got to see Elsa prepare some of this when I was staying at her place Tuesday night. Ginger, squash & apples, along with sherry made for an excellent soup. And I’m not really fond of squash. We ate it all up.

The salad was a refreshing mixed greens with apples, toasted walnuts, and dried cherries. The maple syrup-based dressing added just the right amount of sweetness to the already sweet & tart salad.

The main course was duck l’orange. I’d never had it before. And haven’t had a lot of duck in my life at that. But the dish was superb. I really liked the orange sauce, and duck has a great flavor. Hell of a lot of fat in it, but Elsa got rid of a lot of the fat before we ever saw the duck. I’m impressed all around.

The dessert was Elsa’s fabulous cheesecake with rum & honey roasted pineapples topping it. I really do prefer my cheesecake nekkid, but if I had to have a topping, the pineapple & rum topping was primo. Despite being full already, we all had generous helpings of the cheesecake at dessert time.

The after glow had to wait awhile since we were completely stuffed from the luxurious feast we’d enjoyed. But while The Manchurian Candidate was playing (HUGE screen – yay!) we had port derby & 5 counties cheeses, plus mixed nuts & a beverage of choice. (Judi went with spumante & I had an amaretto sour. Elsa stuck with Diet Coke, I believe.) A wonderful way to end the evening, I felt.

It’s truly wonderful having friends who live in 9th floor apartments in Chicago and friends who can cook up a storm. I enjoyed the dinner so much, I decided to clean the kitchen. Wow! Me cleaning the kitchen voluntarily! Took me ages to do it (cuz I’m slow at kitchen cleaning), but the meal was worth it.

I should have written this post earlier in the day when I was clearer of mind. I still want to talk about Elsa’s wonderful dinner and the rest of the great weekend I had at Judi’s new place. I even have an idea for a meme that I might make one of these days, too. I didn’t even wish miz_em a Happy Birthday on the 3rd (though I did get to wish her a happy birthday the night before at Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant, which was even better!) So, in case I’m even less coherent tomorrow night, HAPPY BIRTHDAY rach74! 🙂

PS, I showed Leo the second episode of Doctor Who. He wasn’t as interested in this one, though we did have some quality cuddle time during the first part of it.

PPS, I REALLY love my Philips DVP642 DVD player. I can simply bung an avi file (divx or not) onto a CD and it plays it. No special settings required! Sweet!

Well, I’m back home & Leo’s being possessive. It’s a bit later than I’d hoped, but that was all due to the Chicago Shamrock Shuffle & the detour from Hell in Detroit. My original plan was to watch the second ep of Doctor Who with Leo when I got home, but he’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Cuz it’s time for me to go to bed!

More stuff about the trip later.

We’re relaxing now. judiang is sleeping on Elsa’s airbed on the floor behind me. elsaf is downloading the new Doctor Who on her laptop in front of me (so sad, Paul McGann rocks!) ETA this is what I get when I let Judi edit my LJ post. And I’m typing this up on Judi’s laptop. In a little while, we’ll drive to the Mexican place in order to meet miz_em and her hubby for supper. And hopefully when we get back, we’ll get to watch the new Doctor Who! Woohoo!

So, onto yesterday’s business. Elsa and I got up early and got ready, and to my shock, so did Judi! Well, it was her birthday and she wanted to be awake for most of it, I think. After breakfast of Entemann’s cheese danish, Judi took us on a tour of the complex. We tried to view the community center, but her magic card didn’t work. Still, a nice building worker took us up to see it. Da-amn! 2 pool tables & a big screen TV! Then he showed us the floor with the swimming pool & wading pool. Nice community center! I want one too!

We then moved onto the sales display office so that Judi could get a replacement for the defective card, but it wasn’t open until noon. So we caught a cab and went to the sushi restaurant we really liked the last time we went to it. I wanted sushi & decided to buy sushi for everyone for lunch. But when the cab arrived, we discovered that the sushi restaurant was closed for business. A homeless feller tried to tell us it would open in 3 weeks’ time, but it didn’t seem all that possible. No matter, we headed over to the Thai place down the street and consoled ourselves with pad thai & pad see eiw. The food was good, and we figured the sales office would be open by then, so we returned.

The neat thing about the sales office is the models of the apartment buildings & of the model rooms. Some fantastic decorating (sometimes freakin’ bizarre) for the model apartments. The scaled down version of Judi’s building was neat to see. But they didn’t put a little figure on her balcony. I figured she was inside playing City of Heroes. And then she hit me. (The real Judi, not the model Judi.)

Once we had the replacement card (this time a key fob) we returned to the community center and Judi and I played pool while Elsa looked on. I managed to lose the first one by sinking the 8 ball in. But Judi was ahead anyhoo and would probably have won. But I really excelled at the next game where I got several balls in in a row – including the 8 ball. Whoops! Lost again (and Judi didn’t even get to shoot that game). I think I like 9-ball better than solids & stripes. (Not that I’m any better at playing it, mind…)

When we returned to the apartment, Judi’s purchases from Bed, Bath & Beyond had been delivered. So Judi and I unpacked them and started putting things together. Elsa did some prelimenary work on the Magnificent Supper while we tried to put one of Judi’s new bar stools together. We had to take apart what we’d already done before we could finish it. And then we decided to go to Office Depot before starting the second chair.

Our Office Depot visit this time was for Judi to check out computer desks. We didn’t have the measurements of the closet it’s supposed to fit into when we were at the store the day before. But I’d measured the closet since then. Judi saw a few that she liked, but nothing really said “BUY ME!!!” so she didn’t buy anything. We returned home and Judi & I built the second bar stool and it took 1/10th of the time as builing the first took. Elsa, meanwhile, began making the Magnificent Supper in earnest.

The meal was wonderful. I shall write about it in the next post since Elsa and I are about to walk to Walgreens (through the sandstorm wastes that is 13th Street). Wish us luck! 🙂

Friends help you move. (Good friends help you move dead bodies.) elsaf and I are real good friends with judiang, but she didn’t have any dead bodies for us. So we just helped her with the moving bit. Her actual moving day isn’t until April 15th, but we helped her to pack her kitchen & living room. We had a good routine going. I built the boxes & labeled ’em, Elsa worked on packing the kitchen, starting with the Fragile stuff, and Judi packed up the books & stuff from her entertainment center.

We worked for a couple of hours and then headed to Hackney’s for lunch. I ordered the fish & chips and followed it with the Leprechaun pie (mint chocolate chip & chocolate ice cream pie). Yummy stuff. Judi paid for our lunches (wehey! and she’d paid for supper the night before – we love our Judi!) and then we got back to work packing. The goal was to stop at 6pm no matter how far along we’d gotten, but by 5:15pm, we’d pretty much taken care of the living room & kitchen. Judi figures she can do the bedroom & bathroom on her own. (Plus, she’s gonna be needing her clothes for the next two weeks.)

Our next adventure for the day was Elsa’s competition in Extreme Sports: Driving through Downtown Chicago when Assholes were Out As Well. She did a great job of swerving & dodging and got us safely to Office Depot. Judi sat in every office chair that they had before deciding upon the birthday present from us to her. We wheedled & deedled (I like that better than wheeled and dealed) with the salesguy until he sold us the floor model at 10% off and threw in a free box of cheese doodles. (OK, I’m lying about the cheese doodles.) Elsa & I also got her a plastic mat for the chair to roll on. And when we got down to the main floor (it’s got a mezzanine where the furniture is) the salesguy had someone make up a bow out of crepe paper and stick it on the chair. Awwww! Happy Birthday, Judi!

Well, Elsa had passed the preliminaries of the Extreme Sports (where we got a bonus for stuffing an office chair into the back seat of a Dodge Stratus) so she went onto the finals: Finding the Bed, Bath & Beyond Hidden on N. Clybourne Drive when Assholes were Out As Well. It was hit & miss there at the end when we took a wrong turning trying to get to the parking lot. But Elsa prevailed against all the odds & we arrived at the lot & got the last parking space. Yay!

While in Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Judi stuffed everything she could into the cart (including things that couldn’t fit) and we sent some stuff for next day delivery to her apartment. We packed up the trunk and then looked for supper. After some aimless wandering, we wound up at a Chinese place. I got General Tso’s & eggrolls, plus a mango & pineapple smoothie. It was good eats. (And Judi let me have her crab rangoon, cuz she’s da bomb.)

Elsa did her Extreme Sports victory run by getting us back to Judi’s old place, where we grabbed enough shit to totally pack the car, including Lance. And if that wasn’t enough, we did a stop at Jewel to get breakfast and a few other essentials (like amaretto). Then it was back to the new place where we crashed while the original Manchurian Candidate played. (I think Lance and I were the only ones watching it…) Then we all slipped off to bed.

I shall write about today when I next write. And tomorrow, we’re gonna meet up with miz_em for supper to celebrate both Judi’s & her birthdays. 🙂

PS: Hope y’all had a lovely April Fool’s Day!

Happy Birthday to the April Fools: judiang & shebit! I know Judi’s gonna have a great birthday, I’m gonna be there to make sure it happens. Hope you have a great birthday, too, Shebit! 🙂

Judi’s kept elsaf & I very busy these past two days. So busy I’ve not had much of a chance to write. But I’m gonna try to rectify that now.

Tuesday night, I drove up to Elsa’s place and got to sleep on her new sofabed. Her living room is wonderful! She did a great job on the refurbishment. And the carpet is really nice. I made up an amaretto sour & watched Pitch Black halfheartedly and eventually fell asleep.

Wednesday morning, we both got up bright & bushy tailed. And when we got on the road, I started keeping track of things.
9:10am Leave Elsa’s
10:01am Done w/ errands (and McDonald’s breakfast) and on the road again!
10:29am Pulled over for going same speed as the rest of the traffic (he CLAIMS we were going 80mph, but I seriously suspect he made that bit up…)
10:32am On the road again!
10:50am Pitstop
12:00pm Swapped drivers (Trina gets vanilla Coke to drink while driving)
1:15pm Rest stop & swap back
3:10pm Arrived @ Judi’s (320 miles traveled)

We picked Judi & Lance up and then headed over to her new apartment. It’s brilliant! And the same distance away from Jewel (her current grocery) as her old place. We ate at a cafe not far from her place or Jewel. I had a BLT & some cream of broccoli soup. We then picked up some things from Jewel and returned to the apartment. The plan was to be at the old place when the movers brought around the boxes & tape, and then go shopping to Bed, Bath & Beyond for some items that Judi wants for her new place. What ended up happening was that we waited, waited & waited for the boxes and ended up going to Bar Louie for supper. I had four-cheese “pizza.” Well, it wanted to be pizza. It was warm cheese on hard bread with some marinara in between. But the highlight of the Bar Louie experience was the chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake that we shared. Damn, that thing was HUGE! But we et it all. And it was wonderful.

When we got back to Judi’s place, we set up our airbeds in her living room and put on the new Doctor Who ep. And since the only TV that Judi currently has at the new place is this little 10″ screen TV, I’d brought around an LCD projector from school and we shone it up on the big white wall. That was way cool. (And since I forgot to bring speakers for the laptop, we used Elsa’s FM transmitter to send the audio of the laptop to Judi’s clock radio. Yay for ingenuity and too much technology!) We then hooked her cable box to the projector and watched BBC America. I got to see an episode of Coupling from season 4 – cool! I’ve yet to get the DVD set for season 4.

I moved my airbed to the den/guest bedroom and slept there. Elsa slept in the living room. And Judi was on her airbed in her room. We all slept well.

Perhaps I’ll write about today during my next post. Elsa mentioned it in her post tonight. Judi REALLY put us through our paces today. 🙂

So, I’m sitting on Elsa’s sofa and watching some movie called Pitch Black on Sci Fi. Elsa’s snoozing beside me – she worked (and played) hard today, so that’s understandable.

Tomorrow morning we drive to Chi Town to see Judi. Woohoo!

I’d write about the odd phonecall I had from a tech support guy, but I’m too tired to be coherent. So I’ll write about it at Judi’s.

Calling all geeks! Calling all geeks! I have an interesting problem with my computer right now. I’ve discovered that QCD cannot make MP3s or WAVS or OGG files because it thinks my computer is unable to do digital audio extraction. MusicMatch, OTOH, has no trouble getting my computer to do digital audio extraction. When I go to Control Panel|Multimedia|CD Audio, the place where I can turn on or off digital audio extraction is grayed out. For both CD ROM drives.

The research that I’ve done so far hasn’t really been useful. Winders says I need WDM drivers. But from what I can tell, CD ROM drives don’t use WDM drivers. So I checked with Creative, makers of my sound card. They don’t have WDM drivers for Win98. Gee, thanks. One site said there may be a problem with old BIOS’s. But my BIOS is as up to date as the website says it should be. (OK, so the last update was a couple years ago… So I may be screwed in that case.)

But then, if my PC is unable to do digital audio extraction, why can MusicMatch do it? And if MusicMatch can do it, why can’t I get another program, like QCD, to do it?

Any suggestions from those of you in the know? (Or who know someone in the know?)

I really need to upgrade this summer. Can’t afford it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need it. 🙂